Corporate president Vitaly Lopota, head of one of Russia's largest commercial space companies -- Space Corp. Energia -- announced that it had fulfilled a its design objectives it took on when it won an April 2009 contract to design a new multi-purpose rocket.

Comments Mr. Lopota, "We have completed the technical design project taking into account the fact that the new spaceship is to fly to the Moon, among other places."

In addition to a potential Moon shot, the rocket will be tasked with ferrying cargo and passengers to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Federal Space Agency Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin announced earlier in the year that the rocket would be constructed and operational by 2018; the news from Energia shows that target may indeed by reached.

Russia seemingly is in a bit stronger position than the U.S., in that it still maintains domestic capability to launch humans into space (aboard the seasoned Soyuz capsule craft). However, the program is under pressure after a string of failed and/or delayed commercial launches. Most recently a suspected failure in the Briz-M booster scuttled a Proton rocket launch from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. The expensive August 2011 failure destroyed two commercial satellites.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev gave the Russian space agency and its private partners until the end of the summer to work out a plan to fix the deterioriating situation.

While the design side of the equation appears to be rolling forward, the business plan to remedy the recent issues is still very much up in the air. Chief Popovkin had proposed creating a holding company that would tie together top commercial space firms -- such as Khrunichev and TsSKB Progress. The plan then involved creating a sub-holding company inside the greater holding pool to specifically pull in the smaller engine producers, including Energomash, the Khimavtomatiki design bureau, the Voronezh mechanical works, Proton PM, and others.

However, Mr. Lopota blasted that plan, calling it a non-market measure. Some opponents feel that shareholders in the corporate space firms will be short-changed if the government combines them, and further feel that it's a return to Russia's communist past -- a controversial topic in modern Russia.

...And if you're too busy (or too lazy) to spend a few minutes hearing the insights of one very smart guy, here's my own take on it:

It is in human nature to only reach as high as the bar you set for yourself.

If we set the bar at robotic missions, that's all we're ever gonna do. We'll sit down here, puttering around behind our joysticks and watching camera feeds coming off of automated probes controlled by primitive microprocessors, millions of kilometers away.

That's not going to spark a whole lot of interest, and in fact it isn't. In fact we're seeing it NOT sparking interest, right now, and we have been seeing it NOT doing that for decades!

Humans in space are a technological, biological, and economic nonstarter for the foreseeable future. Sure, we can blow untold billions on publicity stunts with negligible real payoff... But if we want to spend tax payer money WISELY and if we want to maximize the LONG TERM payoff, then we have to start thinking and investing strategically and analytically, rather than with our gut. We need to drastically lower costs of launching payload to orbit. We need to develop new propulsion, shielding, and repair/maintenance technologies. We need to work on improved materials, and better space hardened electronics. We have decades if not centuries of tech development before we can start building AFFORDABLE and SUSTAINABLE colonies on the Moon, never mind Mars or asteroids. Until we have the right tech capabilities, all we can do is one-shot flag-planting propaganda trips at prohibitively enormous costs. Dreaming about Star Trek won't make it happen any sooner: it will take a great deal more hard and tedious R&D to make any real progress. So we can either spend money on that, or we can waste that money on geopolitical stunts.

As for inspiring future generations, how about overhauling education curricula to make STEM mandatory rather than elective, to create integrated cross-disciplinary curricula that span the entire k-12 period instead of disjointed yearly plans that wastefully rehash the same thing again and again, to introduce hard sciences like chemistry and physics, together with higher math starting with algebra, in middle school and teach those subjects to ever higher levels until graduation. In short, stop treating kids like incapable imbeciles, and start really challenging them and demanding excellence as a matter of course - instead of boring them to tears and teaching them to hate STEM. That would go a long way toward ensuring that we as a whole continue to make rapid progress. And leave inspiration to sci fi books/movies/shows/games - it worked well enough in the past; no need to reinvent that wheel.

It has been proven that children are capable of learning very advanced subjects at very young ages, so we should start with math and science as early as possible. I have seen kids who can understand algebra at even third grade levels, problem is most teachers teaching that level don't even understand it well. In the U.S. we have allowed the vocal minority who want to push arts and humanities as the focus of our educational system to have their way at the expense of having a good science and math curriculum. One study I found has the US ranked at 14th in the world in Reading, while we rank 17th at Science and only 25th in Math. Japan and Finland are at the top of the list currently, why are we not closer to the top?

One reason we are not at the top is we have allowed the entitlement ideology to permeate our society to the point that we believe we shouldn't have to require people to do things but that government should do them for us. Why learn to read, write, do math or science when we can just sit home and watch TV instead. Another is that we seem to be afraid to ask children to actually put forth an effort to learn or make them spend time and energy to learn when they want to do other things, as if making them do something will somehow destroy their self esteem so much that they will become some kind of nonfunctional creature with a broken psyche. Children are much tougher than we give them credit, they can handle a little pressure to perform, and used wisely it will make them stronger as adults. My parents made me do my homework before I could play with my toys or go visit friends, I didn't end up homeless on the streets, I ended up with a degree in chemistry, and interest in art and the ability to write not only technical papers but fiction as well all while still having a well rounded social life.

We have allowed lazy people to succeed in this country and now they are the driving influence on our society, I am afraid of where that will lead if something is not done about it soon.

I do agree that robotic missions are cheaper and can take more risks to push the envelope technologically. But since we seek to expand human existence and ultimately to give more choices to humans, then robotic missions should be used to pave the way for human missions. Robotic missions should be used to evaluate and validate technologies that will ultimately allow humans to go farther, to places like Mars where they can live.